Some of you have asked me how to do a hammer on guitar, so this lesson is going to address that.
A hammer on is very simply hitting a guitar string without plucking or picking it at the same time. So you’re just using your left hand for this one. It is a fairly simple technique, but you can use it in some very advanced ways once you’ve got the hang of it.
Hammer on guitar riffs sound pretty cool, and you can also use hammer ons to throw in chromatic passing notes all over the place.
Definitely something worth practicing and mastering…
Here’s another lesson for you riff-hungry rocksters out there!
One cool way that you can start looking for new chords to use is to examine the top few strings of the bar chords. Here’s a tip -- if the notes are used in a chord, then they’re going to sound great together in a solo!
In fact, using different intervals that come from chords is a great way to break out of the rut of sticking too close to the scale when you’re improvising.
So without further ado, here’s today’s guitar tip.
Today I’ve got another easy finger picking pattern for you and your guitar. I used a very simple and mellow chord progression in this lesson, and there are literally tons of different directions you could go with it.
I tried to give you a couple of different ideas on how you can change up the progression, but I really encourage you to get creative with this one and go nuts on it.
Start with the E Minor Diatonic scale (or G Major -- same difference) as that gives you the root notes you can use from the key of G. Basically any of the notes in those scales on the lowest three strings will qualify.
Keep your drone notes the same all the time -- the open G (3rd string) and the D on the 2nd string. These two notes are the I and V of the key of G, a perfect fifth, and therefore go well with every other note in that scale, which is the reason why its easy to be creative with this one.
In addition to mixing up the root notes, try mixing up your picking pattern once you get the hang of the one I showed you in here. Try alternating different strings, or use the two strings at a time method I showed in the video.
I know there’s a fair amount of interest in different guitar finger picking techniques -- and truthfully I’m sure you could do an entire course just on finger picking -- so I decided to do a little lesson on one of the picking techniques that I like to use.
I like finger picking with this style because it gives a very rhythmic, mellow sound that fits my mood perfectly when I just wanna relax or cool off. Works great with minor chords, as you’ll see here, but feel free to try this guitar finger picking technique with anything that strikes your fancy.
Start using this 2 finger picking technique with the Am7, Dm7 and Em7 chords that I show you here, because you can get used to picking the root note plus the 2nd and 3rd strings. Once you’re familiar with that, try it with some other chords and start moving the string that your root note is on.
